Just in Case

by Meg Rosoff

  Well, you had to give the boy credit, Agnes thought. He’d sure hit the nail on the head with his crazy doom stuff. Not that she thought he’d been making it up exactly, but doom had always seemed a somewhat melodramatic expression of what she took to be ordinary teenage anxiety. She wondered if he could have known about this all along, whether the plane crash had somehow been wired in as a premonition of his fate.

  It hurt her head to think so hard about something so difficult to grasp.

  She wondered, as she sat bleeding slowly, watching what remained of the terminal melt into a soup of glass and metal and human flesh on the ground, if they were alive because of being blessed or in spite of being cursed.

  She wondered if this were the end or the beginning of Justin’s clash with fate. Or just some fairly average incident in the middle.

  29

  The crash made front-page news as far away as Los Angeles and Beijing, providing fodder for international terror pundits the world over. Scotland Yard stepped in and a massive police hunt was launched, suspects arrested, and video footage examined over and over for clues.

  It would be months before investigators finally filed a report citing the age of the plane and mechanical failure for the tragedy. Much to the disappointment of the press, no evidence of terrorism, conspiracy or foul play emerged.

  But Justin didn’t need the report. He knew who was responsible. It took a great deal of self-control to overcome his impulse to confess to crash investigators. If the bullet meant for you kills an innocent bystander do you become an accessory to murder?

  He went home with Agnes. ‘Just for a day or two,’ he begged, and how could she refuse? He was obviously in shock and besides, would have a great deal of explaining to do. His parents thought he was on a class trip. In Wales.

  They arrived at her flat, shutting the door against the world like refugees. The familiar objects, the smell, the colour and warmth of home calmed Agnes, but Justin’s leg jiggled and the twitch in his left eye intensified. He ran his fingertips repeatedly back and forth over the short soft nap of a velvet chair while she made up the sofa with clean sheets. She rummaged in a drawer for pyjamas that would fit him, then collapsed into bed herself.

  At 4 a.m. she woke with a start, heart pounding, to a scratching noise at the bedroom door, like an animal. It was Justin, fully dressed, wild-eyed and trying to smile.

  ‘Meow,’ he said. ‘You need a cat flap.’

  Agnes slumped back against the pillows. ‘What is it, Justin, can’t you sleep?’ He shook his head and she stumbled out of bed with a sigh.

  ‘I’ll make a cup of tea.’

  She carried a tray into the sitting room and Justin watched the fingers of her left hand as she poured milk into steaming cups. He felt awkward and unconnected to the world of people. I’d like to have sex with her fingers, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut.

  When he opened them again she had reached for her camera.

  ‘Agnes…’ he began.

  ‘Yes, Justin?’ Click click click.

  ‘Agnes, please. My dog is missing.’

  Agnes lowered the camera as he leapt to his feet and began pacing, his face crumpled with misery.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since the plane crash.’

  ‘Justin, come and sit down. I’m sorry about your dog.’

  He glared at her. ‘No, you’re not. You’re humouring me.’

  She flared back. ‘Well, I am sorry about your dog. I’m sorry he exists in the first place.’

  He looked as if she’d slapped him.

  She turned away. ‘Please, Justin. This isn’t easy for me either.’

  He sat down, leg jiggling nervously, angrily. ‘I saw something at the airport, Agnes.’

  Despite the horror, she was desperate to sort through her photographs and review the disaster close up. She wondered what particular detail amidst the devastation had spooked him.

  ‘Why didn’t you show me?’

  ‘Show you what, Justin?’

  ‘The magazine. Doomed Youth.’

  She was taken aback. ‘I did show you. I gave it to you as soon as it came out. I phoned you up and asked if you liked it.’

  He jumped up and tried to think, but his brain wouldn’t organize the thoughts. Agitated, he shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see what you did? You jinxed me. It’s your fault. I didn’t need to be any more doomed than I was already.’

  ‘Justin –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You looked beautiful.’

  ‘I looked doomed.’

  Agnes felt unnerved. She couldn’t keep up with his train of thought. ‘Justin, can’t you sit down please? Haven’t you slept at all?’

  ‘The sleep of the dead. The damned. In answer to your question, no.’ He turned to face her once more, eyes glinting and full of sorrow. ‘How can I sleep with a conscience full of blood?’

  He swiped his face with the back of his hand and she saw that he was exhausted, and scared.

  ‘Justin, you don’t feel responsible, do you?’

  He spun off around the room. ‘Of course I don’t. Of course I do.’

  Agnes got up, took hold of his arm and pushed him gently back on to the sofa.

  ‘I was right, Agnes, wasn’t I right?’

  ‘Please, Justin. Can’t you stop for a moment? You’re confused.’

  ‘No I’m not.’ He smiled, an awful smile. ‘I’m clearer than I’ve ever been. I can see things.’

  Agnes felt a jab of fear. ‘What things?’

  ‘Things that might happen. Illness, death, catastrophe.’ He lapsed into a grotesque cowboy accent. ‘Stay away from me, baby, I’m trouble.’

  Agnes spoke to him slowly, calmly. ‘Justin? You’re alive. You’re OK now. It’s over.’

  ‘No.’ His expression was fierce.

  Then he stood up, grabbed a copy of the oversized magazine from a neat pile by the sofa and slammed it down on the table. He didn’t even have to search. It fell open to his picture under the headline ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’. He stared out at himself with a face anticipating catastrophe.

  ‘It’s just fashion, Justin.’

  ‘Really? It looks more like fucking Nostradamus to me.’

  Oh boy, Agnes thought, as he stormed out, slamming the door behind him. He’s at least right about one thing.

  It’s not over. Not yet.

  30

  In the aftermath of the crash, Agnes spent most of her waking hours at her studio. It was a refuge, and she found it impossible to look away from the downloaded images flashing up on her computer screen. She sold a handful of crash photos to a news agency, one of which showed the blurred figure of a boy in a distinctive grey coat in the background. The best ones she saved for herself.

  Left alone, Justin braved the rain and cold at all hours of day and night, combing the neighbourhood for Boy. He rang Agnes from every phone box he passed, spouting incoherent cosmic conspiracy theories until she stopped answering. Then he left messages.

  ‘I’ve notified all the dog shelters, the police, the army,’ he told the answerphone in a voice ragged with anguish. ‘If I had a photo I could put posters up, but it won’t do any good if he’s been murdered. Do you think he’s been murdered? Agnes? Are you there? Pick up the phone!’ Then he set off again, whistling for Boy. His feet splashed across uneven tarmac, through oily puddles, the monotonous sameness of suburban sprawl distracting him not at all from the buzzing panic in his brain.

  Agnes tried telling herself he would come to terms with the tragedy, would return, with time, to something like normal. If only he would go home, go back to school, forget about his stupid dog. Especially that.

  When she put her key in the door, she did it silently, hoping he’d be asleep. We can’t go on like this, she thought, slipping into bed, relieved and guilty at his absence. He’s a mess. He needs help. I’ll go mad.

  She was fast asleep by the time he returned. Out of consideration, he knocked softly. Then leant on the b
ell.

  She came eventually, wrapped in a short silk robe. Even straight out of bed her hair lay glossy and smooth against her head. He wanted to touch it. She looked regal, like a Japanese princess.

  ‘Come in, Justin.’ She yawned.

  ‘I can’t find him.’

  ‘I gathered that. You’re soaked. Have you eaten anything today?’

  Justin shook his head and looked at the clock. Four forty-one. No wonder it was so dark.

  She fetched him a towel. ‘I’ll put some clothes on. The café opens at five.’

  Agnes led him down the street. It was cold and his coat was sodden. They entered the little café and she greeted the waitress on duty. The place was already crowded with people on their way home from clubs; it smelled of sausage and beans and grease and sweat. The windows were opaque with steam. They squeezed into a cramped booth in the corner, and Agnes ordered tea and a full English breakfast for them both. She hung his wet coat on a hook and passed him her scarf, which he wrapped around his neck and shoulders, grateful for the warmth.

  ‘I don’t need to ask how you are,’ she said. ‘I can see for myself.’

  He sipped his tea, hands curled round the mug, face buried in the steam.

  ‘You haven’t talked to anyone today?’

  ‘Only you.’

  ‘Have you phoned your parents? What about school? Have you told anyone at all?’

  He shook his head.

  Their breakfast arrived, and he pushed the beans around his plate with a knife.

  ‘Maybe you should see a doctor.’

  ‘Fate is trying to kill me. I miss my dog. What’s a doctor going to say? “You’re not ill, you’re mad as a muffin”? They’ll either lock me up or tell me to get a grip and no one will believe the truth anyway.’

  ‘What exactly is the truth?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Justin?’ Agnes sighed, taking his hand and speaking to him gently. ‘It is horrible. I can’t stop thinking about all the blood, seeing it, and the screaming people. I can’t stand loud noises, they make me jump out of my skin. I’m terrified of crowds. But I don’t feel responsible. We just happened to be there, along with a thousand other people.’

  ‘That’s your truth. Mine’s different.’ He pulled his hand back and immediately wished he hadn’t. ‘At least you were there, Agnes. At least you saw it happen, you know I didn’t imagine it. The plane landed exactly where I was standing three minutes earlier. I didn’t imagine that, did I?’ His voice was pleading.

  ‘No, you didn’t. It’s just hard for me to think of it as…’ She paused. ‘As anything other than a monstrous coincidence.’

  Justin scanned her face, desperate to define the experience in a way that included them both. ‘Maybe it doesn’t make any difference how you think of it.’

  ‘Oh, Justin.’ She looked back at him, defeated. ‘Don’t you see? It makes all the difference in the world.’

  She called for the bill, paid it, and they walked home together in the grey dawn. Agnes stopped at the front door to pull off her shoes. By the time she entered the flat, he was lying curled up on her bed, asleep.

  She covered him with a blanket.

  A few hours later, Justin stirred. He blinked open his eyes and found Agnes sitting next to him.

  She looked down, her face kind. ‘Hello.’

  Her voice sent a thousand volts of electricity through him, turned him one-dimensional with need.

  ‘Are you feeling any better?’

  He couldn’t think and he couldn’t help himself. He reached up and kissed her, kissed her so unselfconsciously and with so much purity of intent that she put her better instincts on hold and kissed him back.

  This is the way the world ends…

  She felt generous, relieved, excited by the intensity of his desire. I am helping him, she lied.

  He didn’t unbutton her top, just slipped his hands underneath to the warm space next to her skin, pressing his mouth to her face and her neck, so that by the time she reconsidered, remembered that this was Justin, mad Justin dancing on the head of a pin like a deranged angel, by that time it was too late, and it no longer mattered much who he was.

  This is the way the world ends…

  There was another explosion, this time inside his brain. Afterwards he felt calm, for the first time since the crash. The love overflowed his body and filled the room.

  He’s very nice like this, Agnes thought.

  Instead of falling asleep, he stared and stared at her as if she were all he required till the end of time.

  It was flattering to be stared at that way.

  And then he buried his head in her arms and cried, told her how amazing she was, how kind, how generous, how wise. He clung to her as the oxygen in the room grew thin, depleted by too many intakes of breath and outpourings of love. She needed to get up, run away, escape his overpowering need and the knowledge that she had done something she wished she hadn’t.

  This is the way the world ends…

  It was the sharp edge of charity that compelled her to stay until he fell asleep again, after which she crept out of bed, showered, left him a note, and with a mingled feeling of relief and guilt, shut the door behind her and went out.

  Not with a bang but a whimper.

  31

  Agnes phoned his parents. She had promised not to tell them about his presence at the airport, but in her opinion he needed help. Or more to the point, she did. She hoped they would come and get him or at least suggest an alternative solution to what Agnes felt wasn’t entirely her problem.

  His mother, however, merely thanked Agnes for allowing him to stay. ‘You’re terribly kind to have him. We really don’t know what to do. Before he went to Wales he just drifted around the house like a ghost.’

  Agnes stared at the phone.

  ‘His father and I keep hoping he’ll grow out of it.’

  Agnes shook her head in disbelief. Grow out of it? But how? He is it. ‘I think you should come and see him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said his mother.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Agnes put down the phone. Some people just shouldn’t be parents, she thought. Like me, now.

  *

  Justin’s mother arrived with Charlie as Agnes was going out. They met at the door.

  ‘I’m sorry to run off,’ Agnes said. ‘Justin’s still asleep. He was out late again, searching for his dog.’ She looked hard at the other woman, who fussed with her gloves.

  His dog’s gone missing? thought Charlie.

  ‘I have to go, but make yourself at home.’ Agnes sighed. ‘There’s tea and coffee in the kitchen.’

  While his mother hovered uncertainly, Charlie toddled over to the sofa where Justin lay sleeping, steadied himself against the edge, and leant in close. Justin opened his eyes to find his brother’s face just inches away from his own.

  ‘Charlie?’

  What’s happened to you? Charlie asked.

  Justin propped himself up on one arm. His eyes burned. ‘I was right,’ he said, in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘A plane tried to land on me. Nobody believes me but I was right. And Boy’s missing.’ His voice broke. ‘I think he’s dead.’

  Charlie watched his brother’s hands, fluttering and nervy, the fingers raw and bitten to the quick.

  ‘David?’

  Justin sat up as his mother kissed him awkwardly.

  ‘How was Wales, darling?’

  Whales? What whales? Wails?

  ‘How was the weather? Were the tents waterproof? Was the scenery nice? What about the food?’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘There was a terrible plane crash while you were away.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing’s safe these days.’

  He didn’t respond and she accepted his silence, having lost her parental bearings so completely that she no longer knew what sort of behaviour to expect from him.

  ‘Perhaps you should come home, darling. You don’t look terribly well.’

  Now ther
e’s a coincidence, he thought.

  His mother turned away, face creased with worry. She found it difficult to accept that his behaviour fitted within the acceptable boundaries of teenage anxiety. But what could she do? She couldn’t exactly order him to come home. His friend seemed nice enough, but was it right for a fifteen-year-old boy to be living with an older girl?

  ‘Would you like some breakfast?’

  He nodded, and she hurried off to the kitchen, relieved to postpone further conversation. In the kitchen she poured cereal and milk into a bowl, wondering when things had started to unravel. Perhaps she’d taken her eye off the ball when Charlie was born. Perhaps he was acting out of jealousy. She knew what the books had to say about sibling rivalry, but had hoped that David, at nearly sixteen, would be less susceptible.

  How could she possibly know what was normal? Perhaps David was one of those boys who found adolescence uncomfortable, perhaps he was merely going through a stage – a jabbering, incoherent, haunted, insomniac stage from which he would emerge calm and self-possessed, pass his GCSEs, get a job, meet a nice girl, buy a house, raise children, retire, have a heart attack, enjoy a good turnout at his funeral.

  She placed the bowl of cereal by the sofa and took his hands in hers. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come home, David?’

  Justin stood up and left the room.

  On the other hand, perhaps he could stay here, just for now. Perhaps he needs time away, a change of scene. Or perhaps he’s in love with Agnes. Suddenly it all made sense: the eccentric behaviour, the mood swings, the nerves. First love, of course! Well. She certainly wasn’t going to be one of those obstructive mothers, the ones who preached morality and abstinence at every turn. Let him have his love affair. She’d help him pick up the pieces when it ended.

  Charlie gazed at his mother, unable to make sense of her expression. He padded around the flat after his brother, trying to get him to talk. But Justin looked past him, and eventually retreated to the bathroom, where he locked the door. Charlie leant against it, defeated.

  His mother tapped softly, but receiving no answer, called goodbye, reminded him to eat, and then – humming a little – packed Charlie into his pushchair and left.